Tag Archives: death penalty

I have been following the re-trial of two of the murderers of Channon Christian & Christopher Newsom. They were a young white couple headed to a party in Knoxville, TN when they were carjacked, kidnapped, raped, sodomized, tortured, beaten & ultimately killed by four black men & one black woman on January 7th, 2007. All were convicted however, due to misconduct of the original judge (who has since been disbarred) two of them are being re-tried. This is the second & last re-trial tied to that disgraceful judge. The victims’ families have been present at every single court hearing & my heart goes out to them. It’s one thing to lose a loved one, but to know that they were tortured so brutally & in the case of the female victim, she slowly suffocated to death in a trash can after being tortured, burned with cigarettes, raped in every way possible & having bleach poured down her throat for hours. I don’t mean to be graphic, but it’s important for people to know how heinous this crime was and remember how much Christian & Newsom suffered before their lives were taken from them.

All five of the monsters had prior records. Even though we know of some of the most horrific, inhumane treatment of humans possible in history – the Holocaust, the lynchings of black people in the South, the Rwandan genocide..etc, we still have so much evil in the world. This case got no national attention and it has to be one of the most brutal murders in modern day America. I just don’t understand how five people can carjack, abduct, rape in every way possible, burn with cigarettes, beat, pour bleach down their throats while still alive, sodomize, shoot & suffocate slowly – two people, just on their way to a party, minding their own business, and get zero national coverage, even though the victims & monsters were different races. If it were reversed & the victims were black persons, we’d never stop hearing about it. It’s a glaring double standard in this country, which only serves to exacerbate racial tensions in America.

I’m in no way saying we shouldn’t hear about cases where the victims are black people, but we should at least have some balance. Where are the hate crime police here? If being white (in & of itself) when you commit a crime against a black person is a hate crime (according to some past accusations) then why isn’t the opposite true? Folks, there are monsters of the worst kind in every race, but when the media highlights some & ignores others, it gives the false impression that one race is more culpable & evil than others. Corporate media outlets take advantage of historical precedents in order to keep us at each other’s throats. At the same time, I don’t have any interest in using cases like this (as some have) to start a dialogue on hate crimes, because I do respect the feelings of the victims’ families, who probably don’t care about legislation, because it won’t bring their loved ones back. I pray that one day we collectively see through this game they play. RIP Channon Christian & Christopher Newsom. God please comfort their families, who six years later have to hear all of these testimonies & details again. I also pray for their killers, even though I don’t want to, because they need salvation from my perspective, but of course they still have to suffer the consequences of their evil actions. The earthly punishment is just not sufficient to me if I’m being honest but I pray that this puts race relations into perspective for America, in the wake of the enormous amount of coverage the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman fiasco received.